


Never Found Love In The City

by TheForgottenDreams



Series: I Said 'I Love You' [16]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Music, Angst, Classy establishments, Heartbreak, M/M, Saddness, comfort of some sort, meet up, run-down diner
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-21
Updated: 2016-08-21
Packaged: 2018-08-10 03:12:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7828261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheForgottenDreams/pseuds/TheForgottenDreams
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Did it have to be so early?” </p>
<p>“Yes, because this is revenge for making me climb eleven flights of stairs in eight inch heels because your apartment building doesn’t have a fucking elevator and also breaking my best friend’s heart.” She pushed one of the two coffee mugs to him, “I ordered you black coffee, sorry if you don’t like it, but I like my coffee to be the same colour and bitterness as my soul.” </p>
<p>“Finally someone who gets it.” Grantaire sighed, fingers curling around the porcelain like a life line.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Never Found Love In The City

“You wanted to meet me?” Grantaire asked, slouching down as he sat in the booth. He winced against the early morning sun streaming in through the window and pulled his beanie down more, aware it was squashing his curls but not caring anyway, doubting Éponine did either. 

Éponine, sat opposite him, just stared. She didn’t smile much, only when Cosette or Marius talked to her or - no, don’t think about him. She kind of terrified him, all five foot nothing of her, especially with nothing but frosty contempt in her eyes, the snarl of her lips and tension in her frame, he knew her life had been hard and that had shaped her into this badass before him, “I did since you’ve finally decided I’m good enough for your presence.”

“I’ve got quite the collection of threatening voicemails, had to see if you’d live up to them.” Grantaire replied, feeling numb, like he had every day since Enjolras left. He hadn’t cried, hadn’t gotten angry, hadn’t even had a drink of anything stronger than cordial. He felt nothing, a terrifying numbness that was far worse. He was pretty sure Enjolras must have extracted his heart whilst he was sleeping and probably sacrificed it to the God of Social Justice and Activism or something. “Did it have to be so early?” 

“Yes, because this is revenge for making me climb eleven flights of stairs in eight inch heels because your apartment building doesn’t have a fucking elevator and also breaking my best friend’s heart.” She pushed one of the two coffee mugs to him, “I ordered you black coffee, sorry if you don’t like it, but I like my coffee to be the same colour and bitterness as my soul.” 

“Finally someone who gets it.” Grantaire sighed, fingers curling around the porcelain like a life line, he inhaled the smell, eyes closed, needing it to wake him up. “Bahorel won’t drink coffee unless it’s milky and filled with so much sugar I don’t know how he still has any teeth left.”

“No, you don’t get to change the subject, Grantaire, we’re here because you fucking destroyed my best friend.”

“Now, now Miss Thénardier, calm your language, we’re in a classy establishment here.” Grantaire answered, looking around at the restaurant she’d chosen, a rundown diner on the edge of the city, in a neighbourhood where a body could turn up and no one would bat an eye. A smart location on her part. The biker’s over at the counter glared at him and one of the waitresses smirked as she passed to another table. 

“Why’re you being a dick?” She asked, “You forget I’m your friend, that I know you’re not like this Grantaire. I know you’re funny and kind and loyal.” 

“Maybe I am, maybe it was all an act, maybe I had a change of heart.” Grantaire suggested. 

“It wasn’t, Enjolras wouldn’t lov-like you if you had been acting, you wouldn’t be that good.” She answered coolly but the effect the words had on him was intense, he felt like everything froze, his heart, his lungs, his brain. When the fuck had Enjolras been in love with him? How? Why? 

“He wasn’t in love with me.” 

“What proof do you have?” She countered, raising an eyebrow – something she’d gotten from Enjolras or Enjolras had gotten from her. They both did it and it was scary when they did simultaneously.

“The lack of proof is my proof.” Grantaire told her, jaw set, hands gripping the table as he fought the emotions racking his chest, anxiety, anger, sadness. “He’s never told me, never text me, never mentioned it. What proof do you have?” 

“I have a shit ton of proof to show he loves you.” Éponine snapped, “So fucking much. It’s in his eyes when he looks at you, like you’re his whole fucking world, the way he has so many photos of you on the board and he looks at them all with such softness that it feels wrong to watch, the way he talks about you when you’re not around which is a lot because you’re his favourite topic, the stupid grin he gets when he sees you and the way he can’t help but be near you. It’s in the hours he spends making his hair right when he knows he’s going to see you, in the texts and tweets he send to you, in his laugh at one of your stupid jokes. It’s everywhere.

“I’ve known him most of my life and not once has he doubted himself until he met you, he suddenly didn’t know what to wear, what to say to you, how to act around you. He thought he was subtle, honest to god thought he was but he wasn’t, we all kind of figured there was something between you. And I honestly hoped for the best, I wanted you to be good enough for him because you’re different to the guys he’s previously been interested in, you are different, or you were before you turned into this asshole before me. He loves you R, and it’s so clear to everyone, everyone but you apparently.”

“Why’re you torturing me like this?” Grantaire asked, blinking to stop his vision from blurring, to keep the tide back from the damn. Turns out he wasn’t heartless. Yay.

“He’s my best friend and he had a complete breakdown because of you. He won’t eat, won’t talk, just sobs and sleeps and wallows in his pain, I don’t think he’s moved from his bed actually. He cried for hours the morning after you split, Combeferre and Courfeyrac didn’t know what to do for him, so they called me and I’ve never seen him like that. I’ve known him since we were three and I’ve never seen him so broken, so defeated.”

“I can’t be responsible for that.” Grantaire answered, putting his elbows on the table and his head into his hands, eyes on the table, hands clenched in his hair. He couldn’t think about Enjolras, couldn’t let himself sink. His sanity was as fragile as a rubber dinghy and he was on the verge of a shipwreck. 

“Bullshit.” She slammed a hand on the table, “You broke his heart, wrecked it. He loves you so much and you just- he wrote songs about you, did you know?”

“No. I didn’t.” He closed his eyes.

“All of his song are about you, all of them, and they’re amazing songs ‘Taire, better than what Jehan’s written for him, they need editing, but their beautiful, you know why?” He shook his head. “Because they’re from him, from his feelings, his love and his pain, because of you. They’re his words, his experiences and his feelings. They’re powerful.” 

“Words are always powerful coming from Enjolras. He has so much to give the world, so much fight, so much passion, so much change.” Grantaire told her, “He deserves more than I could ever give him.” 

“Are you listening to yourself?” her mouth fell open as she looked at him, slamming the table with her hand at each point. “You love him too R, you love him, I know you do, I know our friends know, everyone knows so I don’t understand, why you fucking left?”

“It wasn’t working.”

“Lie.” 

“We had a myriad of problems.”

“So does every relationship.”

“We’re not compatible.” 

“It’s like you’re not even trying now. You two are probably the most well-matched people I know, you’re opposites sure, but you cancel each other’s bad bits and strengthen the good. You’re the first people you think of in the morning and the last at night right? You’re each other’s go-to person, you just want to be around each other all the time. I’ve never seen two people more in love with each other and I know Combeferre and Courfeyrac.”

“We were a secret okay?” Grantaire snapped, looking at her, looking at the fire in her eyes, “I didn’t want us to be, but he never suggested telling everyone and I didn’t know how to say it but I don’t want to be in a relationship where we can’t tell people, where he’s ashamed of me. I don’t need that.”

“Enjolras is not ashamed of you.” Éponine retorted, jaw set. Tone short and eyes burning. She was beautiful when she was angry, her features harshened but instead of making her look less attractive it made her look more so, she looked fierce, like she could fight the world and win. She probably could. “If there’s one thing I could confidently bet money on, it’s that.”

“Why didn’t he want to tell anyone?” Grantaire asked, meeting her eyes, jaw and fists clenched, “Why didn’t he ask me on dates, or hold my hand in public? Why did he go cold? Why did he leave? You all say he’s the best thing that ever happened to me, that he loves, why didn’t he tell me? Why didn’t he fight for me, Éponine why didn’t he?”

And there it was. 

The dam burst, all his pent up anger and hurt and sadness poured out of him via his eyeballs. The table became splattered in his tears as he ripped his gaze from Éponine’s, head on the table, arms hugging himself for some comfort, anything, shoulders shaking uncontrollably as his sobs wracked his body. 

He’d done so well at not feeling, at blocking it out and pretending nothing had happened. So well. And now, all his progress had been eradicated, he felt his heart rip into two, no, not two, into five billion little pieces, felt the pain he’d put off, tearing at his soul. The bitterness, the resent, the love, the pain, oh god the pain. So much pain.

Then Éponine was there, sliding onto the seat next to him, pulling him up roughly to show she was still angry and the conversation wasn’t over but she was his friend too and she wasn’t going to let him suffer alone. He was shoved into her shoulder as he cried, her t-shirt became soaked where his face touched it, nose smushed uncomfortably against her collar bone, she ran her fingers through his hair, held him closer, rocking them back and forth as emotions washed through him, attacking him, leaving him wrecked and exhausted. 

“Why didn’t he fight for me? Why?”

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by Change Of Heart by The 1975.
> 
> I imagine after this that Grantaire leaves the city for a bit and then Cosette goes ape at Eponine because he was doing well and then they fight about their personal issues - I actually wrote it out and I might post the little extra bits after as a what goes on behind the E/R plot. 
> 
>  
> 
> Now is probably a good time to talk about the series title from The Sound by The 1975 - it's meant to be ironic because neither of them have ever said 'i love you' out loud to each other, they say it physically and emotionally and yeah. Irony. Or as ironic as I get.
> 
> You can find me on tumblr as Beelze-bertha


End file.
